


I Won't Tell No One Your Name

by indevan



Series: Rock Band AU [23]
Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, F/M, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-11 16:04:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12938793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: It started because she saw his signature on something in the house.  The surprisingly fancy, looping cursive that spelled out Vegeta H. Prince.  She’d asked him what the H stood for and he got all cagey, all clammed up.  Naturally, her curiosity is piqued.  And that’s generally not a good thing





	I Won't Tell No One Your Name

**Author's Note:**

> [AU timeline](http://vertigoats.tumblr.com/post/166537761367/since-after-the-first-few-the-fics-in-rock-band)

Bulma thinks that Vegeta has gotten generally pretty good about sharing with her.  He’s less closed off, more inclined to tell her what he’s thinking and what’s bothering him.  His past still remains largely murky to her but he generally gives her enough to fill in the blanks herself.

Except this.

It started because she saw his signature on something in the house.  The surprisingly fancy, looping cursive that spelled out Vegeta H. Prince.  She’d asked him what the H stood for and he got all cagey, all clammed up.  Naturally, her curiosity is piqued.  And that’s generally not a good thing.

“What’s the point?” Yamcha asks when she tells him.

Bulma folds her arms and watches him poke at the nasty love bite on his neck before sighing and looping a scarf around to cover it.  He’s lucky it’s so cold, she thinks with a smirk, or else it would be really obvious.  Trunks, standing next to her, notices and folds his arms as well.  They’re going to lunch and she’s already dressed and gotten Trunks bundled up.  They’re simply waiting on Yamcha to move his  _ ass. _

“Tien?” she asks rhetorically.

He nods and pulls his hair out of back of the scarf.

“You wouldn’t know to look at him but he gets pretty wild.” He sighs and smiles fondly at his reflection.

Bulma sometimes wonders if she gets that cheesy about Vegeta but--no.  They aren’t the type and she doesn’t want to be.  It doesn’t suit them.  She shakes her head.

“I want to know.  It’s weird that he’s hiding it.”

Yamcha shrugs and turns away from the mirror, apparently pleased with what he saw.  He’s gotten more fastidious about his appearance since he and Bulma dated, nearly ten years ago.  Then again, she reasons, back then he was homeless and couch-surfing--not that she knew it at the time.  Taking care of himself is a luxury he has now.

“Let’s go,” he says, grinning.

Outside, it’s not snowing but it’s blustery and grossly cold.  Bulma pulls her scarf up over her nose with her free hand and shivers.  Trunks lets out an annoyed little squawk and glares at the weather as if it personally slighted him.  Everything is in shades of gray: pewter, silver and everything is slushy from the previous snowfall a few days ago.  God, she hates winter.

“Why don’t you just ask his friends?” Yamcha asks. “If you’re so invested?  I’m sure Goku knows.”

“Who?”

Yamcha shivers and takes a moment to pull his gloves more firmly on his hands.

“Sorry--Kakarrot.  Krillin calls him Goku and I see Krillin more than I see him…” He trails off and continues to gesture with his hand.

It’s a good idea, though.  If anyone would know Vegeta’s middle name, it  _ would _ be Kakarrot.

\--

“No, I don’t know it.”

Bulma slumps along with her sigh.  So much for that, she figures.  She tucks her legs up under her on Kakarrot’s couch and shifts her gaze to Gohan doing his homework.  His youngest had expressed cursory interest in her when she came in but once she said that Trunks was home with Vegeta, he immediately went back to his uncle.  Right now, Goten is curled up in Raditz’s arms, nearly camouflaged by his hair.

“You don’t?”

Kakarrot shakes his head.

“He’s never told us.”

“You have no idea what the H stands for?” she asks.

Another shake.

“Nope.”

Raditz shifts Goten and starts bouncing him in his lap.

“Maybe it’s for someone in his family.  Like me and Kakarrot’s middle names.”

Kakarrot tilts his head, furrowing his brow.

“Uh, my middle name isn’t for anyone.”

Raditz blinks at him for a moment, clearly confused.

“Yeah, it is.  It’s Gohan.”

At the sound of his name, Gohan looks up from his workbook.

“Not you, GoGo.”

“Oh.  Okay.”

He goes back to work, humming to himself and tapping his little foot on the ground in a rat-tat-tat drumbeat.

“My middle name isn’t Gohan,” Kakarrot says. “It’s Goku.  Grandpa came up with it because he thought it sounded nice.”

Raditz goggles at him.

“Wait.  So that kid from Kame Kami has just been calling you by your middle name this whole time?”

“Uh...yeah?  When we met in, like, kindergarten, he couldn’t pronounce Kakarrot so I said he could call me Goku.  What did you  _ think _ it was?”

“A nickname!”

Bulma looks between them, unable to fully believe the conversation that she’s witnessing.

“I can’t believe I’ve gone almost twenty-five years not knowing my own brother’s middle name,” he grumbles.

“Honestly.  Raditz  _ Tora _ Son.” Kakarrot shakes his head and starts towards the kitchen, ostensibly to begin making dinner.

“Tora?”

Raditz stills from bouncing Goten on his lap and quirks a brow.

“Uh, yeah?”

“That’s not my middle name.”

Bulma laughs so loud she nearly topples from the couch.  Kakarrot doesn’t know  _ his _ middle name either?  Damn, how could she expect them to know Vegeta’s when they didn’t even know each other’s?

“It’s not?”

“No.  It’s Toma.  After Uncle Toma.  Why the fu--hel-- _ heck,” _ he says, barely managing to catch himself from swearing in front of his nephews.  It reminds Bulma about how neither of she nor Vegeta watch their language around Trunks and, oops. “Heck.  Why the heck would my middle name be Tora?”

Kakarrot takes out a skillet and shrugs.

“I dunno.  Mom and dad were fifteen when you were born.  I just figured they liked tigers or something.” Bulma and Raditz both laugh and he smacks the flat of the skillet into his hand. “Hey, we’re named after  _ roads, _ okay?”

Bulma quiets and quirks her brow.

“Roads?”

Raditz nods as he resumes bouncing Goten on his lap.

“Yeah.  On the northside, there’s this overlook and these two, crisscrossing roads that lead up to it are called Raditz and Kakarrot.  Our mom liked that and named us after them and that’s why teenagers shouldn’t name children.”

Her own name origin seems a bit less odd in comparison but, either way, these two aren’t any help.  She figures that, on some level, his middle name doesn’t matter and it’s simply a symbol for him  _ still _ not being open with her but other than that: she’s a scientist.  She’s  _ curious. _

“Try his little brother,” Gohan says, looking up from his workbook. “I bet he’d know.”

The three of them quiet and look towards him as he smiles a smile of someone wise beyond his years.

“Oh, yeah,” Bulma says. “Tarble.”

“Good idea, GoGo.”

Bulma nods.  That makes sense.  Tarble would know and, more than that, he’s a nice kid.  He’ll definitely tell her.

\--

“Absolutely not.”

Buma pulls the phone away from her ear, surprised at the determination in Tarble’s voice.  In fact, it sounds a lot like Vegeta whenever he gets resolute about something and it catches her off-guard.

“What?” she asks irritably.

Trunks hears the annoyance in her voice and reaches up to hold her arm.

“Mommy okay,” he tells her seriously.

She pulls the phone away and strokes Trunks’s hair back.

“I’m fine.” To Tarble, she says, “What do you mean ‘absolutely not’?”

She hears him sigh on the other end of the line and  _ that _ sounds familiar, too.  Maybe he and his brother aren’t as different as they claim to be.

“I mean that me and Vegeta are finally on good terms,” he says, “and I’m not going to ruin that by telling you and then having him murder me.”

“Is it that bad?”

Tarble’s silence says everything.  Dimly, Bulma is aware that she’s wasting her day off with this unnecessary mystery but now she has to know.

She glances from her phone into the kitchen where Vegeta’s putting in their takeout order into his phone.

“Well, thanks anyway, I guess,” she says and hangs up.

Trunks pats her arm consolingly as if he has any clue as to what’s going on.

“Order’s in.”

Vegeta drops down on the couch next to her and, immediately, Trunks scrambles off of her to plop down on his lap.

“Okay.”

Bulma leans against him and sighs.  The mystery of this has gone beyond figuring out his middle name.  It’s falling into the same issues they had before.

“Why were you on the phone with my brother?”

She pulls back, feeling the familiar embarrassment of being caught red-handed.  It’s the same way she felt as a teenager when she snuck out to fool around with Yamcha and tried to sneak back into the house at two AM.

“Because I wanted to find out your middle name.”

She could lie but that never works out for them.  Vegeta makes a face, which is predictable.

“Why does it matter?”

Bulma sighs. “Because you’re keeping it from me and.  It reminds me of before.”

Again, she figures it’s best to simply be straightforward.

“I keep it from everybody,” he says, “no one but my family knows it.  And the government, I guess.”

Family...Bulma’s mind accelerates forward for a moment to calling his dad but she pushes it away.  If he’s minorly annoyed at her trying to get the information out of Tarble, he’ll be absolutely livid if she called his dad.  That and Bulma still hasn’t met the man and it would be weird to meet him, go “Hi, I’m your son’s girlfriend.  What’s the H stand for?”

“Yeah, but…” She exhales a sigh of aggravation. “I am family.”

At once, she sees about five emotions pass over Vegeta’s face and his shoulders slump in.

“Fuck, why do you always know what to say to make me give in?”

Bulma grins and reaches up to stroke a hand through his hair.

“Because I’m your Achille’s heel, babe.” She bounces up on the couch and tucks her legs under her. “So are you going to tell me?”

He looks down at Trunks.

“What do you think?”

Trunks turns his gaze to her for a moment and says, resolutely, “No.”

Vegeta smirks and Bulma playfully hits his shoulder.

“Come on.”

He looks at her for a moment and captures her hand in his.

“Later.” His voice hits a low, husky pitch and she shivers despite herself.

\--

“Later” is apparently not only after dinner but after Trunks is in bed.  After he’s worked on a new riff he wants to try.  After Bulma distracted him from that with sex.  “Later” is when they’re getting ready to actually sleep.  Despite the cold, she’s only wearing light pajamas since she shares the bed with a furnace.

“So?” she asks the moment Vegeta is under the covers.

He groans and lies back on the bed, arching his back.  Even the sight of him--shirtless and delectable--isn’t enough to dissuade her from her goal.

“Fine.  You unrelenting…” He sits up and folds his arms over his chest.  Scowling, he says, “So, let me tell you some backstory to understand why this is my middle name.”

Eager, Bulma scrambles up onto her knees and links her arm through his.

“Okay.”

“And this never leaves our fucking bedroom, got it?”

She nods.  A few ideas had run through her head as to what the mysterious “H” stood for and now she’ll know.

“You know how my mom was an actress, right?  On stage and shit?” At her nod, he continues. “So my parents met when my mom was playing Ophelia.  My dad went to the show and saw her and it was this instant connection.  Love at first sight and all that shit.”

His jaw clenches after he says it and Bulma strokes a hand down his chest.  She’s long since figured out how much it pains him to talk about his mother.

“Right,” she says.

“So, a few years later, when they were married and had me, they decided to name me after my dad--obviously--and then.” He winces and slowly, painfully says, “commemorate how they met.”

It dawns on Bulma in an instant and she widens her eyes.

“Ohmigod.  Vegeta H. Prince.  Vegeta  _ Hamlet _ Prince.”

He pulls a face and nods.  She puts both hands over her mouth.  No  _ wonder _ he didn’t want anyone to know.  Not just the fact that his middle name is Hamlet but in conjunction with his last name?  God, that’s embarrassing.

“I told you,” he says. “This doesn’t leave this room.”

Bulma crosses her heart and leans into him.

“You got it.  I will take it to the grave.”

She snuggles into his chest and tilts her head up to kiss his still clenched jaw.

“Not in the mood,” he says and pulls away.

_ Oh. _

He’s mad, she realizes, and embarrassed that he told her.  Bulma screws her mouth to the side.

“I’m sorry I, like, forced it out of you.” She rests her head on his arm. “If it makes you feel better, my middle name is Tanga.”

“It doesn’t.”

She tries a different method.  Bringing her head to his chest, she takes one of his piercings between her teeth and tugs.  It’s always a surefire way to get him in a better mood, if not right into  _ the _ mood.

“We already fucked tonight anyway,” he says, easing her off of him. “Just go to bed.”

Bulma relents.  If he’s upset, she won’t force him.  Even so, she can’t resist having a little bit of fun.

“Alright.” She kisses his cheek. “Good night, sweet prince.  And flights of angels sing thee to thy--aah!”

She finds herself hoisted up in the air and being carried out of the bedroom.

“What are you doing?” she demands.

“You’re sleeping on the couch tonight.”

Unceremoniously, Vegeta drops her on the couch.  A moment later, he comes back with her pillow and a blanket.

“Rude!” she calls. “Come on, babe!  To thine own self be true!”

His response is to give her the middle finger.  Giggling, Bulma falls back on the couch.

**Author's Note:**

> http://vertigoats.tumblr.com


End file.
